AMD Catalyst 14.6 BETA released!

AMD has released a new Catalyst driver package version 14.6 BETA. Most significant changes are removal of the Windows 8 support, so make sure you update your Windows to Windows 8.1 Update 1 which is currently the latest version. It’s just so much better, so I’m wondering why you haven’t done so already 😛 Other important changes are quite big performance improvements, mostly for R9-290 series, but maybe even older HD7xxx users will benefit from it. Who knows, I will update anyway as I always do. Oh and AMD also added support for GPU accelerated JPEG images decoding, resulting in twice as fast JPEG images rendering. Too bad only a limited set of APU’s and GPU’s is supported, so I don’t think my older AMD E-450 will be getting any love from it.

Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst™ 14.6 Beta Driver for Windows

• Performance improvements
  • Watch Dogs performance improvements
    • AMD Radeon R9 290X – 1920×1080 4x MSAA – improves up to 25%
    • AMD Radeon R9290X – 2560×1600 4x MSAA – improves up to  28%
    • AMD Radeon R9290X CrossFire configuration (3840×2160 Ultra settings, MSAA = 4X)  – 92% scaling
  • Murdered Soul Suspect performance improvements
    • AMD Radeon R9 290X – 2560×1600 4x MSAA – improves up to 16%
    • AMD Radeon R9290X CrossFire configuration (3840×2160 Ultra settings, MSAA = 4X)  – 93% scaling
• AMD Eyefinity enhancements:
  • Mixed Resolution Support
    • A new architecture providing brand new capabilities
    • Display groups can be created with monitors of different resolution  (including difference sizes and shapes)
    • Users have a choice of how surface is created over the display group
      1. Fill – legacy mode, best for identical monitors
      2. Fit – create the Eyefinity surface using best available rectangular area with attached displays.
      3. Expand – create a virtual Eyefinity surface using desktops as viewports onto the surface.
  • Eyefinity Display Alignment
    • Enables control over alignment between adjacent monitors
  • One-Click Setup
    • Driver detects layout of extended desktops
      1. Can create Eyefinity display group using this layout in one click!
• New user controls for video color and display settings
  • Greater control over Video Color Management:
    • Controls have been expanded from a single slider for controlling Boost and Hue to per color axis
  • Color depth control for Digital Flat Panels (available on supported HDMI and DP displays)
    • Allows users to select different color depths per resolution and display
• AMD Mantle enhancements
  • Mantle now supports AMD Mobile products with Enduro technology
    • Battlefield 4:  AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1366×768; high settings) – 21% gain
    • Thief: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920×1080; high settings) – 14% gain
    • Star Swarm:  AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1920×1080; medium settings) – 274% gain
  • Enables support for Multi-GPU configurations with Thief (requires the latest Thief update)
• AMD AM1 JPEG decoding acceleration
  • JPEG decoding acceleration was first enabled on the A10 APU Series in AMD Catalyst 14.1 beta, and has now been extended to the AMD AM1 Platform
  • Provides fast JPEG decompression
  • Provides Power Efficiency for JPEG decompression

Known Issues  

• Running Watch Dogs with a R9 280X CrossFire configuration may result in the application running in CrossFire software compositing mode
• Enabling Temporal SMAA in the AMD Catalyst Control center under a CrossFire configuration when playing Watch Dogs will result in Flickering
• AMD CrossFire configurations with Eyefinity enabled will see application stability with BattleField 4 or Thief when running Mantle
• Catalyst Install Manager text is covered by Express/Custom radio button text
• Express Uninstall does not remove C:\Program Files\(AMD or ATI) folder

Download:

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows%208.1%20-%2064#amd-catalyst-packages

AMD driver webpage is experiencing some weird problems, which makes only a 64bit version available for download. I hope they will soon fix the webpage problems…